What did I tell you guys?
That self-excommunicated KCUR FM host Jabulani Leffall would come out of hiding eventually and likely choose the safe harbor of The Pitch to do so.
No tough questions, just a ton of references to yesterday’s KC Confidential headline challenging Leffall “to come out of hiding.”
Leffall says he went to Party Arty Saturday at the Nelson Atkins Museum, therefore “No, man, I’m not hiding at all,” he said.
Hey wildman, it doesn’t matter how many parties you go to, when you quit on the air after two years then duck multiple reporter’s calls for a week, that’s hiding.
Leffall just happened to email the Pitch yesterday shortly after KCC called him out for hiding from his listeners.
“There’s no shortage of avenues for Jabulani to take,” I wrote yesterday in challenging him to speak out about his unexplained exit. “The Pitch and certainly Tony kissed up to him plenty the past two years. He could share his side of the story with either with little worry. They want it bad enough to assure Leffall a soft landing.”
And a soft landing it was.
The Pitch didn’t even have the you-know-what to ask him about their goofy story and headline about him not being on drugs. That’s right, according to an unnamed Pitch source Leffall wasn’t on drugs during the radio show he quit on.
Short as it was, the Pitch story referenced KCC‘s description of Leffall being “in hiding” no less than three separate times.
Yet no mention of that it was KCC that had called him on that. Instead, the Pitch wrote “he is not in hiding, as some media observers have suggested.”
Some media observers, eh?
Small town journalism at its finest.
What Leffall’s email did say was the “General Manager and Program Director and myself made a ‘gentlemen’s’ agreement not to discuss internal matters and I plan to hold up my end of the bargain.”
The bottom line: Something fairly flaky must have gone down, money may have changed hands (that’s how radio silence is usually bought) with nobody now the wiser.
At least we can rest assured that according to that unnamed Pitch source Leffall wasn’t on drugs.
Nice one.
Thank GOD you found him. Whew, what a load off my mind.
Does anybody even know who this Jablowmi guy IS? I have never freaking heard of him before. What are the ratings for his “show”? Maybe 100 people, if that?
Ok, here is the whole quote from the “Pitch” article.
“My motivations for my actions were neither premeditated nor of malicious intent in leaving KCUR. And officially, I won’t comment on my reasons for leaving or the manner in which I resigned. Further, The General Manager and Program Director and myself made a ‘gentlemen’s’ agreement not to discuss internal matters and I plan to hold up my end of the bargain.”
Not “premeditated”? So, you show up at work, on the radio with the Walt Bodine locally famous KCUR gig handed to you on the proverbial silver platter by way of your unimpeachable bona fides (*snicker*) and extemporaneously, on air, with no discernable reason, quit at the end of the show.
There was no “Malice”.
Gentlemen’s agreement my fuc*in azz.
Translation- “After a night of smokin sherm and getting buck naked, I chased a Picanese into an alley and shaved it until it looked like Basquiat. Suffering several bites on my hang down, I doubled down on my usual dose of Oxy to kill the pain. Durring my interview with Susan Crawford (Susan Crawford, author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age.) I realized that she was telepathically transmitting the numbers 666 into my head with her new HTC. It was an Omen. My boss, who looks just like Atticus Finch took a shot at me, so I quit.
I plan to spend all my time now, with Yael Abouhalkah repealing the 2nd Amendment.
Asalaam alaikum.”
Hearne,
You were no more forthcoming about Glazer’s exit. You bobbed and weaved tough questions in the comments section before you dispatched Whinery in a really lame effort to smooth things over. Except Glazer went to Tony and called you out for wanting to protect your KCC turf because he was getting more attention than you. Nice one!
That’s the best you got Exclamation Point?
For starters Craig did not go on KCC and quit with no exclamation like Leffall did. I made the decision to use the hours I spent editing and cleaning up his copy to write more and ended the relationship. Simple as that.
So instead of me writing one column every day or two, I’m turning out two or three every day. Why don’t you re-read (or maybe read) those two unedited Craig columns and imagine going thru one of those puppies seven days a week for two years. That’s hard labor dude and no fun at all.
It is fun though to speculate about things you have no clue on though, right?
Like your contention that I “dispatched” Whinery.
Odds are I’d have said nothing (unless asked, like Leffall was by at least three local news medias). David came to me and asked if I’d mind if he poked around and wrote something about it. I said, go for it.
So he talked to me and spoke to Craig for half an hour or more and away he went.
I think I made only one small edit on his column.
Protecting my turf? In a sense maybe. I didn’t start this site to toil unpleasantly at editing bad copy and not have the time and/or energy to write.
I started it primarily for me to write and editing Craig (and a couple of other writers who’ve moved on) just took too much time.
As for Craig getting more attention than me, eh? Hard to say for sure. However with him choking out seven columns a week and me just four or five, perhaps you’re right.
Hey, but everybody’s happy now (except possibly you).
Craig has a new home. Tony a new baby. Me, I got my life back. and as you can see from yesterday’s column, I still have Craig!
Look, this is the way Craig and I played the game for 16 years at the Star and he loved (almost) every minute of it. Go check out the wall in the lobby at Stanford’s. There’s probably more pictures of me up there than there are of Craig.
How’s that for bobbing and weaving? Worked for Muhammad Ali.
Was Craig worth it? I’d have to say yes, otherwise I’d be the world’s biggest dummy for going through all of that tedium for two years. But frankly it wore me down and in the end, just wasn’t worth it anymore.
Satisfied now?
Got your life back? Wow, what a heavy cross Glazer is to bear. You’re right about one thing, Glazer didn’t go out with an audible bang like Leffall did. You just stopped publishing him and hoped no one would notice. Except people did and you did not address it, just like the KCUR fellow who did not take your call.
Speaking of which, did you ever consider the possibility that he simply didn’t see it fit to hash out a personnel issue with a blogger who lavished his site with stories of Glazer banging ladies in front of their kids or a hilarious procession of misreporting about Jardines or a suicidal weatherman?
Closed for renovations? Suspect in a cold case murder? Count’s 0-2.
So while you take the Pitch to task for their use of anonymous sources, why didn’t you cultivate a few of your own at KCUR to figure out how the story went? By then you were not editing Glazer stories and had your life back. Right? Wouldn’t that be better than stamping your feet with a couple of posts complaining about no-calls from Leffall and the KCUR honcho? Maybe that’s why you were characterized as an observer rather than something else, like perhaps a reporter. A watcher rather than a doer.
Maybe Whinery is up for the task. He covered for you on Glazer, even though that didn’t go so well. He’s no Ali when it comes to bobbing and weaving, and neither are you.
If I was you I wouldn’t admit to editing any of those pieces. The effort of writing and editing does not show.
I expressed my only thought on this first time; I dont CARE why he’s gone as long as it doesn’t affect the Saturday/Sunday line up. Other than that, this caught even LESS attention, if thats possible, than if I just heard Darla Jaye unexpectedly stood up and walked away from the board! Neither are part of my listening enjoyment! (I know you can’t use the word “Darla” AND “listening enjoyment” in the same setence.)
There’s more intrigue among people sitting in a doctor’s office thumbing through a well-worn edition of Where’s Waldo than there is playing where’s Jabulani. Good God. At least people know who Waldo is.
I agree, Hearne, something is really flaky here. It smacks so hard of the “we won’t discuss personnel matters” blah-blah we hear from school boards and city councils. The fact is, he quit on the air, nobody knew it was coming, and now I think he owes his listeners and the community that USED to enjoy the show some sort of reasonable explanation other than KCUR’s crappy “different direction” spiel or the “gentleman’s agreement” thing. Good grief, why should we even care…and yet we do. You don’t go out in a blaze of glory without some kind of reasoning…
Lets just let Haddix do the friday night fish fry all the time
And then today, we get a puff piece in the Star. It still doesn’t really tell us much: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/02/01/4043384/kcurs-jabulani-leffall-explains.html